Shiana is a large suburban neiberhood of Pula that offers a nice variaty of architecture built in various periods.
The main protagonists of today's post are some fairly tall condominiums from the seventies. The blue and yellow buildings shown in the right part of this opening shot were completely blue when I was a kid. They are still called "Plave zgrade u Šijani" by the people of the city and surrounding towns & villages. "Plave zgrade" means "Blue buildings." "Šijana is "Shiana", the neiberhood I'm presenting here.
The current look of the "Blue buildings" was defined a decade or two ago when they got a new coat of paint that made them look fresh and healthy again.
I personally, like the combination of light blue and yellow better than the two shades of blue that preceded it.
The combination of colors is at its best in the middle of a sunny day when the sky is intensely blue; mostly or completely blue.
I took all these photographs today after paying the car insurance for this year in a small office in Shiana. The relatively warm and sunny weather arrived after a series of gray, humid days so people from quite a few apartments all around the city took the opportunity to dry the laundry on the gentle breeze that was blowing the whole day.
If you ask me, clothes and architecture go very well together. I mean, I love to see the laundry drying on the lines under the windows and on balconies. Sometimes it looks almost like a celebration of ordinary life, a celebration in which the clothes take the meaning and function of flags and pennants.
Next to the "Blue buildings" that are blue and yellow now, there is a group of brown buildings that were also blue once. Their neutral colors make their blue and yellow neighbors stand out even more.
It's the same architecture, basically, on display here but different colors give a different feel.
Simple geometric elements of these buildings; different quadrangles that create patterns are a joy to explore through photography.
Shiana may appear as a boring part of the city at first sight, but if in the right state of mind, one can find surprising beauty in this stretch of suburbia.
Here I zoomed in on the upper parts of the buildings known as "Crvenkapice"
"Crvenkapica" means "Little Red Riding Hood." It isn't hard to guess how they got their nickname.
Some of the similar buildings in Shiana don't have any nickname or I never heard it. I don't live there, after all. My home is in Medulin, about ten kilometers from the city.
Maybe some buildings just aren't iconic enough to deserve a nickname.
Here you can see yet another complex of condos from the same area. This work of condominium architecture is surrounded by family homes, parks, and trees.
The insurance company office I visited today is situated on the ground floor of the building presented in this photograph. I can't remember exactly but I can pretty confidently say that this and surrounding buildings that share a bit of style and some elements, were built in the period between 2005 and 2010.
This shot shows the passage that leads through the middle of the ground floor.
Here you can see a fragment of the same building in the foreground and details of the neighboring building behind it.
In the following photograph ...
... I zoomed in a bit more.
I zoomed in even more in this shot. The impressive zooming capability of my Canon PowerShot SX60 HS helps me a lot in exploring the details of the buildings. Only if I'm far enough the shapes aren't too distorted.
Here you can see two more neighboring buildings added to Shiana more or less in the same period.
In this shot, I zoomed in on the second of the two buildings introduced in the previous photograph.
In this shot, a shot that shows another building, those two buildings serve as a lateral frame. A frame that makes the composition of the shot considerably better.
Across the street from the building with the small insurance company office I visited, there is a group of much smaller older houses with gardens.
Not far from there, across another street and the fairly large parking lot, there is this building of another, much bigger insurance company. Quite a few insurance companies are situated in Shiana.
By the side of the road, more or less in the middle of all the stuff I presented in the post, there was this billboard that advertises the concert of the singing lady known as Senidah.
I never heard of Senidah before so I Googled a bit a few minutes ago to see what kind of music she's performing.
She's a Death Metal queen! 😃Just kidding. She's a Balkan Trap diva.